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Thursday, 16 June 2016

Spam: Dr Happy's Terrorism Conference

Fake conferences are a pretty common scam. The criminals send out spam about serious-looking upcoming conferences that don't exist and then rip victims off for travel costs, conference fees and hotel accommodation. This spam about a fake conference about terrorism caught my eye because it comes from the amusingly named (but fake) Dr Happy Wisdom:

On
behalf of the International Economic Development on Human Security and
Terrorism Organization, I am pleased to invite you to our conference
that will be held from August 15th to 19th, 2016 @ the conference place in Dallas Texas USA and August 22nd-26th 2016 @
in Dakar Senegal. The conference meeting will contain various talks and
mini workshops related to the issues of Challenges to Economic
Development & Human Security in our society.

The
topic of the conference is "The Effect of Terrorism on Global Economy
and Human Security " the sponsors of this event shall cover your
round-trip air tickets from your country to the USA and from USA to
Dakar Senegal back to your country and we shall also provide visa
assistance with the U.S Embassy in your country of residence and your
ground transportation from the airport to the conference venue. The
hotel accommodation booking cost will be your own responsibility in Republic of Senegal. Please contact the conference secretariat for more information and registration for participation: [iedhsto.officedesk@gmail.com].

We look forward to your confirmed presence at the conference.

Respectfully Yours,

Dr. Happy Wisdom,

Program Assistant.

The email does actually originate from an IP address in Senegal (41.82.15.40) but then it is routed through a hacked server belonging to the domain bajajcapital.com which is a finance company in India. The compromise email account can be seen in the "From" field.

At best this scam is some sort of financial fraud. At worst, turning up to it could put your life in danger. Avoid.